Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095)

by Paulits, John

  Now Emery frowned. He looked into each book. Then he showed the inside of each book to Philip. Inside each front cover was a bookplate that said, “Property of Emery Wyatt.”

  “They wrote my name in each book. I can’t give you a book that already has my name in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, anybody that saw one at your house would think you stole it from me.”

  “I’d tell them I didn’t. I’d tell them you loaned it to me.”

  “You wouldn’t get a chance because they’d be too polite to mention it to you. They’d leave and tell all their friends what they saw, and then they’d all think you were a thief. I wouldn’t want that to happen to my best friend.”

  “If I was your best friend, you would give me some of the prize,” Philip said, his voice rising.

  “Here, you read these and I’ll read these. And then we’ll switch. But when we’re all done, you have to give the books all back to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they have my name in them.”

  Philip couldn’t think of an answer.

  “And we can both play detective this week. You can use my disguise kit. It’ll be fun.”

  Philip calmed down. Emery was being pretty generous.

  “Here, look,” said Emery. He picked up the Great Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. On the cover was an illustration of two men sitting on a train facing one another. A window was in between them. One of the men was leaning over explaining something to the other man. “I can be this guy,” he said, pointing to the man leaning over, who was wearing the kind of hat that was inside the disguise kit. “You can be this guy.”

  Philip read the caption. The man with the hat from the kit was Sherlock Holmes. The other man was called Dr. Watson.

  “Why do you get the fancy hat?” Philip wanted to know.

  “I won the prize.”

  Philip was about to argue that he had won the prize but decided he didn’t want to walk around with that silly hat on anyway. Emery could keep it.

  “Is there another hat in there like Dr. Watson has on?” Philip asked. Watson was wearing a domed hat with a small brim going all around it.

  Emery checked through the box. “No. But I have an old baseball cap. We can cut the brim off and use it.” He ran upstairs and back. In his hand was a tattered red cap with a white ‘P’ on it.

  “It’s got a letter on it,” said Philip. “There’s no letter on the hat in the picture.”

  Emery looked at the picture. “We can turn the hat inside out. Like this.”

  Philip looked inside the cap. No letter. He nodded.

  Emery’s mother came downstairs.

  “If you want lunch you have to eat it now while they’re asleep,” she said.

  Emery shrugged. “Want some lunch?”

  Philip shook his head. He’d tried that before. Emery’s mother was always so busy she made terrible lunches. Once she’d given Philip a sandwich but had forgotten to put any meat in it. Philip had been too polite to mention it, and for the first and only time in his life he had to eat a bread sandwich.

  “No, I’ll go home. When you finish eating, call me and I’ll come right back and we can get into disguise.”

  Emery nodded. The boys said good-bye and Philip left.

  Halfway down the street he remembered he still hadn’t gotten his twenty cents from Emery.

  Three

  When Philip arrived back at Emery’s house, Emery had his disguise kit laid out on the dining room table. A small round mirror, encased in a light blue plastic square, stood on the table. Emery was holding a mustache under his nose and looking into the mirror.

  “How do I look?” Emery asked, wiggling his upper lip to make his mustache dance.

  “You look stupid. Nobody our age has a mustache. Except that one girl in Mr. Beebers’ class, but she doesn’t count.”

  Emery threw the mustache back into the box. “Ready to get into disguise and do something sneaky?”

  “Like what?”

  “I think we should follow somebody and try to learn all their secrets.”

  “Suppose they haven’t got any secrets?”

  “Everybody has secrets. Remember when you snuck into Disher’s garage—”

  “All right. All right. Never mind. You didn’t tell anybody, did you?”

  “No, it’s a secret. But it wouldn’t be a secret long if we were on our trail.”

  Philip wanted to change the subject. “What shall we disguise ourselves as?”

  “Here, put this on.” Emery handed Philip the red baseball cap. It was turned inside out and the brim had been cut off. Emery put on his double-brimmed Sherlock Holmes cap. “That’s first.”

  Philip bent over to look into the mirror. “Let me see the picture.” He compared himself with the man in the Sherlock Holmes book. “The hat should have a little brim all around it.”

  “I tried to leave some brim, but it was too thick. I couldn’t cut it with the scissors.”

  Philip nodded. His hat didn’t look as good as he thought it would, and Emery’s hat looked better than he first supposed. Philip studied the four white lines running up and down the inside of his baseball cap, where the four quarters of the hat were sewn together. “I don’t like these lines, and the air holes look dumb.”

  “Nobody’ll notice,” Emery said.

  “What about the wigs?” Philip asked. There was a bushy black-haired wig and a straight-haired red wig.

  “I tried them. They’re too itchy. This other stuff is way better.”

  Philip watched Emery glue on a fake nose. Then Emery took a dark pencil from the kit and colored in his eyebrows. Finally, he put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Emery stuck his finger through the circle where the glass should be. “Empty,” he smiled.

  “What can I use?” Philip asked, impressed with the way Emery had changed his appearance.

  “Here, try this nose.” Philip took the nose Emery handed him, held it in place, and looked into the mirror. It was a very large nose. “Isn’t there a smaller one?”

  “Nope. Only two noses in the kit.”

  Philip felt a slight stirring over the fact that Emery had taken the smaller nose for himself. But all he said was, “Give me the glue.”

  Philip attached the nose and rechecked himself in the mirror. It was a shocking change. “Wow.”

  Emery handed Philip a red pencil from the kit.

  “Color your eyebrows and give yourself some freckles.”

  Philip stared at Emery and said slowly, “Why do I have to use the red pencil?”

  “We both can’t look the same, can we? We’re not disguising ourselves as twins.”

  Philip wanted to argue that the ridiculously big nose he was wearing would successfully prevent anyone from thinking they were twins, but things were getting too interesting to waste time arguing, so he took the pencil.

  Looking into the mirror, he pressed the pencil hard against his right eyebrow and colored. Then he colored the other eyebrow. With an artistic flourish he connected the eyebrows over his nose. Then he pressed the point of the red pencil against his cheek.

  “Wet it,” Emery said.

  Philip wet his finger and applied the spit to the pencil point. Then he dabbed his cheeks until they were covered with red spots. He turned to Emery.

  “That looks great.” Emery smiled.

  Philip checked the mirror.

  “You sure I don’t look like I have the measles? People will be running away from me.”

  “No, no. Nobody’ll notice.”

  Philip took another look into the mirror at his eyebrows. It looked as if someone had thrown a long piece of saucy spaghetti at him and it stuck to his forehead. But he did look different.

  “You can use the ear,” Emery said.

  Philip turned to him. “The ear?”

  Emery handed him a big plastic ear.

  “Where’s the other one?” Philip asked.

  “I can’t find it.”

&nbs
p; “You lost an ear. A whole ear?”

  “I spilled everything and it must have rolled someplace.”

  Philip looked at the big ear. “Ears don’t roll.”

  “It went somewhere. Here, put it on.”

  Philip took the big ear, scrunched his own ear up, and stuffed it inside the rubber ear. He checked the mirror, turning his head back and forth. The big ear and the big nose sort of went together. But it was only one ear.

  “I can’t go around with one big ear and one little ear,” Philip protested.

  “Look at me,” Emery argued. He turned sideways. “How many ears can you see?”

  “One,” Philip answered.

  Emery turned to the other side. “Now how many ears can you see?”

  “One,” Philip answered.

  “So there.”

  “So there what?”

  “People can only mostly see one ear at a time. Nobody’ll notice your ears don’t match.”

  “But now you’re looking at me and I can see your two ears.”

  “That’s only because we’re talking together. Don’t talk to anybody and people will only see one of your ears at a time. And even if they see both, they’ll be too polite to mention that your ears don’t match. Did you ever tell anybody that their ears didn’t match?”

  “Of course not,” Philip said, raising his voice. “I never met anybody whose ears didn’t match.”

  “Nobody’ll notice. Nobody’ll notice.” Emery waved his hand. “Now, where shall we go to find somebody to follow?”

  “Some place dark a hundred miles away,” Philip grumbled.

  “Where?” Emery asked.

  “Nothing,” said Philip. After a quiet couple of seconds Philip said, “How about the supermarket? There’ll be a lot of people there.”

  “Yeah,” said Emery, “and we can walk round and push a cart and nobody’ll pay any attention to us.”

  “Unless they see my ears,” Philip grumbled again.

  “Don’t worry, I told you. Nobody’ll notice. Now let’s go to the supermarket and find somebody who looks suspicious.” Emery gathered up the rest of his disguise kit and tossed it back into the box. “I have to give my mother her mirror back.” He took the mirror and ran upstairs while Philip put his jacket on and checked his hat.

  “Ready?” said Emery when he got back. “How do I look?”

  Philip studied Emery’s false nose, black eyebrows, empty glasses, and fancy hat. “You look fine. How do I look?”

  Emery studied Philip’s inside out, half-a-baseball cap, spaghetti line, freckles, big nose, and one big ear. “Don’t worry, nobody’ll notice,” he said and led Philip out the front door.

  Four

  Two people were walking down the sidewalk towards them. The first was an old man. He took a long look at Philip and said, “Well, hello, Howdy Doody. Great freckles.” He gave the boys a thumbs-up and passed by.

  Philip turned to Emery. “Howdy Doody? What did he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Emery. “Uh-oh. Here comes Leon the loser.”

  “Just keep walking. Maybe he won’t recognize us,” said Philip.

  Leon was Emery’s cousin and a boy who rarely had the slightest piece of good luck. He tripped. He fell. He lost things. He messed up in school. Nothing ever went right for Leon.

  Leon smiled his chip-toothed smile at them—he’d been jumping up and down on his bed and missed, he’d told them—and said, “Hi, Philip. Hi, Emery. I’m going to the store for my mom.” He walked by without stopping.

  Philip and Emery paused, turned, and looked after him.

  “How’d he know us?” Philip asked in amazement. “That’s means everybody will know us.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Maybe he saw us come out of my house. Yeah, that’s probably it. The people at the supermarket who don’t know us won’t know us.”

  Philip turned to look at Emery. “What did you say?”

  “I said that Leon probably...”

  “No, the second part.”

  “I said that the people at the supermarket who don’t know us won’t know us.”

  “What does that mean?” Philip said in a loud voice. “Of course the people at the supermarket who don’t know us won’t know us. If they don’t know us, they wouldn’t know us whether we were in disguise or dressed regular.”

  “But the second time they see us, you know, later, they won’t know it was us when they saw us in disguise. When they call the police and report they were followed by two people who look like us, they won’t know it was us because then we won’t look like us.”

  “Who will we look like?”

  “We’ll look like us.”

  “Huh?”

  “Us regular instead of us disguised.”

  Philip thought it over a minute. “I think I get it. You mean when they see us now, they don’t really see us because we’re not us right now. So the next time they see us and we’re really us, they won’t know us because it’s really us.”

  Emery looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just repeating what you said,” Philip said in a louder voice. Sometimes Emery made him want to shout just to be sure his words got into Emery’s brain.

  “You mean anyone who sees us now doesn’t really see us and when they do really see us they won’t know it’s us that they see?”

  Philip could feel his stomach muscles gathering into a nervous knot. As quietly as he could he said, “Emery, let’s just keep going and get to the supermarket.”

  Emery nodded but for the rest of the walk Philip could hear him saying under his breath, “If they see us now... No, when they see us later... No...”

  The supermarket was two streets away in an outdoor mall that was just a long line of stores in the middle of a giant parking lot. The only store in the mall that Emery and Philip ever used was the movie rental store. The two boys paused on the sidewalk in front of the supermarket. People were walking by, some pushing carts full of bags toward their cars, others pushing empty carts toward the store entrance.

  “Grab a cart,” said Emery.

  Philip spun a cart around and, with him pushing the right side and Emery pushing on the left, they headed for the store entrance.

  When they started up the first aisle, the one filled with paper goods, Emery whispered, “See, nobody noticed your ear.”

  Philip nodded, trying to look at everybody sideways so they wouldn’t see his two ears at once.

  “Who shall we follow?” Philip whispered back.

  “I don’t know. Let’s keep looking.”

  Up and down the aisles Philip and Emery searched. They rejected a man carrying a quart of milk and a box of diapers. He was moving too quickly. Then they rejected an older woman pushing a cart, who stopped in front of practically every item in the store. She was too slow. Suddenly, Philip grabbed Emery by the arm and stopped.

  “There’s that girl,” said Philip.

  “What girl?”

  “The one from the library. Her, with the blonde hair. See her? She’s the one who smiled at me.”

  “That girl smiled at you? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Because I was in the library.”

  “No girl ever smiled at me because I was in the library. Thank goodness.”

  “She was in front of me when I returned your book. Hey, you still owe me twenty cents.”

  “I know. I know. Don’t worry. Want to follow her? It’s a pretty suspicious thing she did.”

  “What?”

  “Smile at you. Why would any girl want to smile at you? Don’t you want to find out whether she lives in an institution or not?”

  “Lives where?”

  “In an institution. You know, where they put crazy people. That would explain why she smiled at you.”

  “Because she’s crazy?”

  “Maybe she’s crazy about you.” Emery smiled, jiggling his black-pencil eyebrows.

  Philip felt his stomach tighten up again. “She’s no
t crazy about me,” Philip said slowly, pronouncing each word carefully. He wondered why Emery always made him either want to talk loud or talk slowly to him. “But she did act suspicious.”

  As Philip and Emery watched, the girl took two cans of soup off the shelf and looked around. Just then the older woman who had slowly been inspecting everything on the shelves came around the corner and into the aisle with her cart. The girl walked over to her and dropped the two cans into the cart. The girl and the woman spoke a moment, then turned around, and moved toward the checkout line.

  “Okay, okay,” said Emery. “Follow them.”

  Philip and Emery pushed their cart down the aisle. Emery grabbed a can of soup and a bottle of ketchup and tossed them into the cart. Then he whipped out his magnifying glass and studied a jar of pickles.

  “What are you doing?” Philip asked.

  “We’ll look suspicious pushing around an empty cart.”

  “No, I mean with the pickles.”

  “I am inspecting them like a careful shopper should,” Emery answered, still bending over the jar of pickles. He turned slowly to Philip and held the magnifying glass in front of his face. Slowly he said, “I’ve got my eye on you.”

  “You’re going to have your black eye on me if you don’t put that stupid thing back in your pocket. Nobody shops with a magnifying glass.” Philip grabbed a plastic bottle of salad dressing and threw it into the cart.

  “I don’t like that kind,” Emery said, putting his magnifying glass away.

  “What’s the difference?” Philip said, his voice creeping louder. “We’re not really going to buy it.”

  “I just don’t like it anyway.”

  Philip reached into the cart, grabbed the salad dressing, and slammed it back onto the shelf. “You pick one.”

  Emery smiled and chose a bottle of red dressing that said Catalina on it.

  “Happy?” said Philip.

  Emery nodded.

  “Where are they?” said Philip.

  “Look, look. They’re checking out. They’re next.”

  “Let’s push this cart out of the way and leave. We can wait for them outside.”

  Philip and Emery left the cart in the middle of an aisle and continued walking away from the checkout counters. They continued slowly up the aisle, looking at the different things on the shelves, until they got to the top of the aisle. Then they turned and walked quickly down the next aisle and out the front door.